SAN MATEO: Meta Platforms, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, has unveiled Llama 2, an artificial intelligence (AI) system that rivals OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard. What sets Llama 2 apart is its unique twist: it will be available for free, enabling startups and businesses to compete with existing AI models at a lower cost. Microsoft has been named Meta’s “preferred partner” and will distribute Llama 2 through its Azure cloud service.
Llama 2 is part of Meta’s large language model (LLM) series, which forms the foundation of generative AI products like ChatGPT. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg emphasized that Llama 2 will be accessible for both research and commercial purposes, highlighting the company’s commitment to openness and innovation.
Meta in AI Race with Rivals
Meta has sought to distinguish itself from other tech giants by being more transparent in sharing the data and code used to develop its AI systems. Zuckerberg believes that open-source models foster innovation while enhancing safety and security. In line with this philosophy, Meta has open-sourced Llama 2 and highlighted its history of open-sourcing AI work, including the widely adopted machine-learning framework PyTorch.
However, the research paper introducing Llama 2 is less transparent compared to Meta’s previous work, omitting specific details about the training data used. The model was trained on a combination of publicly available data, excluding Meta’s own products or services. Personal information from websites was also removed from the training data.
Meta plans to make its AI models available for download directly or through Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform. While financial terms of the partnership were not disclosed, Meta confirmed that the models would also be accessible via Amazon Web Services, Hugging Face, and other platforms. It’s worth noting that although Microsoft is labeled as a “preferred” partner, the company is also a significant funder and partner of OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT.
In related news, Microsoft announced at its Inspire event that businesses will be charged a monthly fee of $30 per user for its generative AI tool, Microsoft 365 Copilot.
